These mental gymnastics are held in high esteem in academic circles and the World University Chess Championships are always a great success. The first edition was held in Odessa in 1990. From 2020 onwards, Chess will be organised in a cluster event as part of the WUC Mind Sports.

The History of Chess in FISU

There will always be people who say chess is not a sport. Here at FISU, we never took this assertion seriously and we integrated the discipline into our programme. This mental gymnastics is held in high esteem in academic circles and the World University Chess Championships are always of a great success. This was the case during the first two editions staged in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1990 and in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1992. Nevertheless, these two contests suffered from the fact that they were not included in the calendar of the Federation Internationale des Echecs (FIDE), meaning that the performance in World University Chess Championships were not linked to the titles of International Master or Grand Master. During the 1994 edition in Sofia, Bulgaria, the FISU Chess World University Championship was recognised at its full value. This time, the results were recorded by the FIDE, meaning that the contest was officially recognised and became part of the events awarded by FIDE’s international titles.

The FISU championships had reached such a high level that things could have hardly been otherwise. In line with the FISU regulations and given the specific nature of the contest, men’s and women’s championships were based on individual tournaments of nine rounds, in accordance with the Swiss system. Alongside the individual contest there was the inter-team rating determined by the adding up of the two best men’s and women’s results. At the end of the matches, three men and women were rewarded with International FIDE titles. The 1996 edition in Leon, Spain, also assigned the rank of International Master to two men and one woman. The high status of the World University Chess Championship was confirmed at the fifth edition in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1998, in which four Grand Masters, sixteen International Masters and fifteen FIDE Masters took part in the men’s competition. Among women, there were eight Grand Masters, three International Masters and six FIDE Masters. It was a dazzling success. After this excellent success and the high participation level, two more editions of the World University Chess Championships were held: first in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in 2002 and then in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2006, in which only eight nations participated . New success of the World University Chess Championship was in Novokuznetsk, Russian Federation, in 2008, as well as in Zürich, Switzerland, in 2010. In 2011, chess entered the FISU history with a contest between the best university players of the world at the Summer Universiade in Shenzhen, China.